Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine has become not only a test for armies, the defense industry, and political alliances. It has also changed the environment in which intelligence operates.
Data that used to take months or weeks to gather can now arrive in minutes, and the traditional model built around human intelligence, satellite reconnaissance, and communications interception is now supplemented by cyber operations, drones, OSINT, social media, commercial satellite images, artificial intelligence, and analysis of vast arrays of open data. But here arises the paradox of modern intelligence: the problem is no longer access to information, but the ability to distinguish a vital signal from noise and turn knowledge into decisions.
In a comment to Tyzhden, Gianfranco Pilli, an expert on international security, an associate professor in intelligence analysis at James Madison University, a senior external associate fellow at NATO Defense College, and an associate fellow at RUSI, noted that among the advantages of intelligence such as access to secret information, the technologies used to gather it, or the ability to quickly turn information into actionable decisions, the latter is the most important.
“Even if relying solely on information and data from open sources, the speed with which we can gain knowledge and understanding is currently sufficient to achieve a high degree of informational accuracy and reliability. However, as Sun Tzu noted, you may know how to win and still not achieve victory. Why? Because victory requires time, resources, and material effort. We have reached a point where information is often sufficient to inform us of what we need to know, but the decisions that follow may remain extremely complex, even when they are based on almost perfect information. You may know precisely the number of civilian casualties a particular course of action will cause and still hesitate on what should be done. Thus, knowledge does not automatically translate into action, let alone rational action,” he says.
This issue — the relationship between information, technology, and the ability to act — could be the key to understanding how the war in Ukraine has changed intelligence.
“This conflict is the most transparent due to the volumes of commercially available data and open sources about tactical events on the battlefield. Social media data combined with commercial data sets allow daily close monitoring of events on the front line. The large volume of this data makes it ideally suited for Big Data analysis through machine learning. Automated language translation tools make this data useful even for analysts who do not speak Ukrainian or Russian. And this has three consequences for decision-makers,” notes Tyzhden American researcher and analyst in the field of defense and security, senior researcher at Research Division NATO Defense College in Rome, specializing in Russia, cybersecurity, big data, and quantitative methods for international security analysis Olesia Vinyas de Souza.
This statement is particularly important when comparing Ukraine with previous wars.
“Since OSINT data is available to researchers in think tanks and the academic community, it has broadened the participants in the public discussion regarding policy options concerning Ukraine, providing independent assessments of the conflict. This has intensified the competition for policymakers’ attention between the intelligence community and non-governmental experts, and also reduced the risk of the ‘echo chamber’ effect (a situation where a person only hears opinions that align with their own views) and potential confirmation bias. We are in a completely different situation compared, for example, to Russia’s war against Georgia in 2008, when the media was the only source of data available to non-governmental analysts,” says the researcher to Tyzhnia.
This contributes to raising public awareness of the nature of the Russian threat, and the role of the media in this process is twofold.
“On the one hand, responsible journalists risk their lives to provide eyewitness testimonies and unbiased reports of the atrocities committed by Russian armed forces in Ukraine. These reports become individual data points for big data analysis. But at the same time, the media increases the viability of OSINT-based analytical products and makes them more accessible to the general public. Moreover, the modern information environment shortens the reaction time between events on the battlefield and the need to take countermeasures, as the public instantly learns about developments and expects corresponding decisions from politicians,” notes Olesya Vinyas de Souza.
As a result, drawbacks arise, such as the fact that the vast amount of open-source data facilitates the opponents’ conduct of cognitive warfare, as information fatigue makes people more susceptible to “sensational” news that is not always accurate and/or has been intentionally altered to maximize emotional or psychological impact.
“The deliberate flow of fake news reduces the signal-to-noise ratio and increases the risk of forming false conclusions. The large volumes of this data make it impossible to verify before uploading it into a model. This increases the risk of erroneous policy recommendations. Overall, the conflict has not only changed the nature of open-source intelligence but also transformed the essence of public political discourse, increasing the variety of voices that can offer their version of reality and challenge official narratives,” Olesya Vinyas de Souza tells Tyzhnia.
At the same time, according to Gian Giuseppe Pili, the current war has not changed the nature of intelligence either as a process, i.e., obtaining information to support competitive decision-making in conditions of confrontation, or as an institution, i.e., the people and rules through which this process is carried out.
“Paradoxically, though, everything else has changed. Although we have previously observed OSINT operations in Syria and other conflicts around the world, only with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have we seen the extraordinary impact this form of intelligence could achieve in shaping public discussions beyond the institutions traditionally responsible for this role. In this sense, the armed conflict created conditions for the full potential of OSINT capabilities, which had already reached a mature stage of development at that time, to be revealed,” he is convinced.
Who has adapted better to the new realities of intelligence: Russia, the United States, or European countries?
At first glance, the technological balance between Russia and the West seems obvious: the US and European countries have significantly larger financial resources, more powerful technology companies, and access to a broader range of intelligence data. However, the war has shown that technological advantage doesn’t always automatically translate into an intelligence advantage.
“Overall, Western intelligence services benefit from a much broader information ecosystem and can use freedom of speech, open source information, and their traditional technological advantages in data collection and funding more effectively. On the other hand, Russian special services operate with fewer restrictions and are in a period where they are particularly crucial tools for the regime’s survival. Russian society has sacrificed a wide range of rights in exchange for enhanced capabilities of the services to operate both domestically and abroad,” notes Tyzhden’s Giangiuseppe Pili.
He also adds that currently both sides have strong and weak points that existed even before the war, but the conflict significantly accelerates these trends. “So far, it is difficult to give a definitive answer, as the situation remains dynamic, and it’s hard to determine how far these changes will go. For example, it is quite challenging to predict how new technologies will impact intelligence tradecraft, although undoubtedly they will. It is also difficult to generalize about either side due to the specificities and diversity of their respective systems,” he says.
Therefore, determining who has best adapted to the new reality of the war is still impossible. The reason is simple: this adaptation is not complete — and the war itself continues to change the rules of the game.
“In my view, the biggest adaptation on the Western side has been the incorporation of new forms of intelligence and technologies within traditional models, which by their nature won’t change but will be supplemented by these new tools and methods (for example, AI),” adds Giangiuseppe Pili.
